Black Flag

Black Flag was a punk rock band in the late 70's and early-mid 80's. They have a very heavy grinding sound carried by Greg Ginn on guitar, and angry vocals by a long series of singers who came and went frequently. Later on they took on Henry Rollins as a permanant singer.

The thing that makes Black Flag particularly interresting in my opinion is that unlike most punk bands, they do not draw so much from heavy metal or pop music as from blues. If you listen to the patterns in their lyrics and to their guitar solos, you can hear that quite clearly.

And finally there was Henry Rollins. After jumping onstage with the band in New York, Dez called him and offered to jam. Soon Rollins was Black Flag's singer. He released a large amount of material. Here is a list of all notable recordings:

Thanks to http://www.ipass.net/~jthrush/flagline.htm for providing some of this information.

A war policy where no distinction is made between enemy soldiers in action and non-combatants. Black flag policies have the tendency to lead to massacres and other such things that bother modern people; hence, fighting a war this way is against international law now. The best example of a black flag policy can be found in the Old Testament book of Joshua; after he took the city of Jericho, every man, woman and child in the city was killed.

Interestingly, Stonewall Jackson originally wanted to fight in the American Civil War under a black flag policy; he viewed the war as a holy struggle, with the South (obviously) on God's side. (Actually, his view of the war as having a religious nature was far from uncommon, on either side.) Fortunately, cooler heads prevailed on him to obey the usual courtesies regarding keeping prisoners safe and avoiding intentional harm to civilians.

A black flag was the original pirate flag, and served as a warning to surrender or face death. As time went on, some pirates began customizing the plain black flag to make it seem more fearsome. From the plain black flag came the jolly roger or skull and crossbones flag, featuring a skull with two crossed bones. Pirate flags became varied and numerous after that, but the original flag flown on corsairs about to board a boat was a plain black flag.